Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their report Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, published on 16 March, and their stated aim to secure the UK’s status as a ‘Science and Tech Superpower’ by 2030 by redoubling the commitment to research and development, whether they intend to reverse funding cuts to research and development programmes; and if so, to which programmes they intend to provide increased funding.

Our commitment to research and development has been clearly demonstrated through the Spending Review announcement to increase investment in R&D across government to £14.6bn in 2021/22. This increase in investment will help deliver our ambition to increase total UK R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

The increased investment will put research and development at the heart of economic and social recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, enabling us to build back better for a greener, healthier and more resilient UK.

As the custodian of the R&D system, BEIS was allocated £11.1 billion for R&D in 2021/22. Funding for each individual programme is subject to our Departmental allocations process, which is under way. We will provide an update in due course.